Dear Marvel: Please Stop Embracing Mediocrity

Dear Marvel,

The self-aware, hard-hitting, and very funny trailer for "Deadpool and Wolverine" actually has me thinking that perhaps you have decided to finally stop being mediocre for a while. I am simultaneously excited that, perhaps, you are finally getting back on your feet. However, I'm also a little bit scared. I mean, whatever would we, the audience, do if Deadpool and Wolverine were to become your latest victims? I don't think it's any secret that your cinematic universe has lived well beyond its glory days. I know that there are a lot of people out there who love you and all that Marvel and the MCU do, so I am well aware that I may be writing a letter that will rub a lot of people the wrong way if it is released to the public due to the simple fact that a lot of people love you with a burning passion. But a handful of movies, most notably The Batman, Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, and Logan have made me realize something: your main filmmaking wing has really embraced mediocrity. Marvel Cinematic Universe films have no distinctive voice, no distinctive directorial vision, and no creativity to them whatsoever. This letter might be kind of long, but I want to iterate something before I get into this barely-suppressed rant that I've been sitting on for about three or four years. I do not hate the MCU. I do not want the MCU to fail. Rather, I want the MCU to succeed, and because I want you to succeed, I want to be willing to point out areas where you desperately need to improve. A lot of the same issues I have with the MCU can be directed at other major film franchises, but you just so happen to be the largest and most notable of them. Call it unfair or repetitive, if you will, but would I really be much of a film blog if I didn't talk about my honest opinion of you, the most financially successful franchise of all time?

My first major issue with your model is your insistence on not putting enough effort into individual projects. I can respect you for having a bigger picture in mind, but you can't sacrifice individual films at the altar of the bigger picture and expect people not to take issue with that approach. The fact of the matter is that MCU movies never look as good as other movies they're competing with and/or drawing inspiration from. I'm going to take us back to The Batman. Matt Reeves's foray into the world of DC's Caped Crusader isn't just, in my opinion, the most impressively shot and visually realized superhero film of all time. It's one of the most impressively shot and visually realized films of all time. The atmosphere that Reeves and crew crafted was an immaculate blend of modern city landscapes and Gothic architecture, and it worked like a charm. To a lesser extent, Todd Phillips's Joker also outdid you in the visuals department, and if the trailer is anything to go by, its upcoming sequel will only push this particular franchise even further ahead of the MCU when it comes to visuals and atmosphere. I am by no stretch a fan of DC as a franchise, and a lot of the problems I have with you are complaints I could easily level at DC as well, but the difference between the DCEU and all you poor souls working at Marvel is that the DCEU has notable exceptions to the drastic flaws I notice with that franchise, while the MCU....doesn't really. In short, you prize quantity over quality, and this is rampantly noticeable in every aspect of your films, from the bland and underdone visuals to the bland and uncreative scores accompanying them. And you might say that comparing you to an honestly one-of-a-kind film like The Batman, a film that should have been nominated for best cinematography at the Oscars, is unfair. Well, not really. If DC can find the money to hire a competent cinematographer to bring a competently-written story to life, then certainly, you can do the same. It's not a big ask. All I'm asking is that you drop the one-size-fits-all storytelling approach. You're already kind of doing it with your Guardians of the Galaxy films. Each very different corner of the MCU needs to have noticeable effort put into it, and distinct visual styles are one thing that you, the creative minds at Marvel, could implement, effective almost immediately. All it takes is a little imagination and a little more time and effort on the part of the production wing, which isn't too much to ask, right? Right?

This lack of creativity and artistry brings me to my next complaint: you have a bad habit of diluting directorial vision in the name of consistency. Can you remember who directed Spiderman: Homecoming without looking through your files? Yeah, neither can I. Normally, we should be able to do this. Alien? Ridley Scott. Aliens? James Cameron. The Dark Knight? Christopher Nolan. The Batman? Matt Reeves. I could do this all day. So, why are you different, Marvel? Well, it's because it doesn't matter who directed each Marvel movie because directorial input is almost always overridden by corporate greed in big franchises, and you're probably the worst offender I've ever seen in this category. All of your films look the same, and worse, they all act the same. Act 1? Introduce the latest MacGuffin that our heroes need to find/protect. Oh no! It's in danger! Act 2? We need to go on a quest to stop the villain! Act 3? We win! Now, who lives and who's dead? You could argue that Avengers: Infinity War did things differently, but we must not forget that Infinity War is essentially just Avengers: Endgame Part I. Marvel, your writers and executives recycle the same story formulas, character arcs, and visual aesthetics over and over again, and while this may have worked for a while given your franchise's impressive command over a connected cinematic universe, it gets old after 10+ years. All of your films look the same, and while this may sound like empty rhetoric, it's almost not an overstatement to say that if you've seen one of them, you've seen all of them.

Now, it would probably be fine for your franchise to stick to a set of rules if these rules were explicitly unique to Marvel. The problem is that they're not. The overall tone of MCU movies is a familiar one that's done better by a host of other franchises, among them the Mission Impossible series. Creativity is dead in the MCU, and it has been dead for some time. There's nothing groundbreaking about the films that make up the MCU. No risks are taken by the heads of your franchise. Neither is there anything expressive about your films. There's none of the artistic flair that you might find in an A24 project or even in more comparable films like Logan. In fact, I think I want to go off on a little bit of a sidenote tangent here to discuss Logan. James Mangold's Wolverine swan song was an effective movie, in large part because of the inherently western undertones of the film. Mangold picked a genre and ran with it. This makes his film quite memorable and unique, largely because westerns aren't really a popular genre anymore. It's hard for me to put my finger on what genre the MCU actually is because, if we're being honest, it doesn't really have one. I would argue that superhero is not a genre because it shares too many conventions with action movies and doesn't do enough to distinguish itself as a standalone type of story. Cinema is an art form, but the MCU is not art. There's no shame in shamelessly pillaging ideas from other stories. That's how you make a movie, after all. However, you don't experiment enough with tones and genres for me to classify your films as anything other than, well, bland and mediocre. If you were to take the easy route through and dig more into some of the action movie undertones that wouldn't be far out of your reach, I would have fewer complaints with your franchise. However, until the MCU finds a realized tone, your films will be bland and mediocre.

Call this next complaint a nitpick if you want to, but I've always had a problem with the humorous elements of your movies. It's been a long time since MCU movies have actually been genuinely funny, and whenever you try to force humor into a serious story that doesn't want to accept it, it always feels, well, forced. What I'm saying is that no one in a Marvel movie talks like people in real life do, and this becomes tiresome after a while, especially because you do, to some degree, try to keep elements of the real world in your stories. Movies like Deadpool, for all of its content excesses, ran with a humorous tone that fit with the characters present in the story, but the jokes in the MCU don't fit with the characters inhabiting its universe, outside of maybe Spider-Man. The non-stop jokes and banter create an unignorable tonal whiplash that became wearisome for me not just by phase 4 when most people started to get over the MCU, but by the time phase 3 had begun. I don't think the complaints I commonly find on internet forums about your corny humor are misplaced, and this is because they don't fit the action movie mold. I don't have anything against an occasional well-placed joke, but poorly-written quips are not a smart or effective technique, and people need to stop equating the jokes in Marvel to stories where they're simply a part of the universe, like Knives Out or Jojo Rabbit. In essence, the complaints about your humor are really complaints about inconsistent tone, and I've found that the more you study film, the more you realize this. I don't think the complaints about the humor in MCU movies are misplaced at all.

Finally, my last big beef with your Marvel Cinematic Universe is less of a complaint with the franchise as a whole and more of a complaint with the Infinity Saga in particular. It's an effect I like to call "The Infinity Saga Paradox." In essence, what this effect does is make your movies predictable. The MCU necessitates its own existence as a franchise and threatening to end the universe that the franchise is set in leaves only one possible outcome on the table for you and your writers: victory for the heroes. Now, a trilogy can threaten to end the world if it's a standalone franchise or a reboot that's distant enough from other member films it shares a franchise with, but if your main storyline is about a threat to end the world, you're left with only one option, and it's whatever option keeps the franchise from ending itself. You can't put your franchise's existence on the line if your franchise needs it. This is why the Infinity Saga chapter of Marvel didn't really work for me, even though it needed to be your capstone story arc. I knew how it would end before it even began.

Now, all that said, I don't hate those who work at Marvel, and that's because not all your traits are unattractive. Interconnecting 33 separate films and molding them into one cohesive story is a massive feat, and I want to recognize you for having the ability to pull this off. I simply don't like the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of its originality (or lack thereof), and I've stated my reasons for that in this letter. I like creativity, and creativity is severely lacking in the MCU. Now, it's not too late. I know phases 4 and 5 didn't turn out well for you, but you can learn from the mistakes of the past. Perhaps you would be prudent to look at other films for inspiration, and start to give each movie a distinctive voice? We would be very appreciative of that!

Sincerely, The Tin Shack Film Institute.

Proverbs 22:29